


by rain and city lights

by trulyfine (ssstrychnine)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Drinking, Drunken Kissing, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Spin the Bottle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/trulyfine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>exo play spin the bottle and kyungsoo goes for a walk</p>
            </blockquote>





	by rain and city lights

Kyungsoo doesn’t know who suggests it, he just knows that ten minutes ago they weren’t in any sort of order and now they’re sitting in a circle and Chanyeol and Baekhyun are debating which of the many empty vessels standing before them will be the best for spin the bottle. They pick a wine bottle, something red because Baekhyun says it’s the most romantic, and Kyungsoo thinks he might have drunk about half of it on his own. The corners of his mouth are sticky in any case and he drags his thumb across his lower lip until his mouth feels cleaner. He can taste the wine at the back of his tongue too, dusty and thick, and he isn’t sure he has his eyes open at all, they feel so heavy. They won’t make _him_ play, he thinks, his place in the circle is purely ceremonial. He leans back on his palms so he can better see the city lights through the windows. 

Chanyeol starts and everyone cheers and Kyungsoo wonders how sober he has to be for the rest of them to let him go for a walk. He likes the city after rain, especially at night. He likes the way the streetlights make ripples of colour in puddles and he likes the smell of wet concrete. If he drinks enough water they might let him go. Junmyeon’s asleep already anyway and he’s sure he can escape the rest of them. Later, he thinks, after the game has collapsed in on itself. 

“ _Kyungsoo_ ,” Chanyeol is whining, insistent like it isn’t the first time he’s said it.

“ _Chanyeol_ ,” retorts Kyungsoo, but then he notices that everyone else is staring at him too and of course the bottle is pointing his way. He presses his lips together. “I’m not playing.

“Everyone’s playing,” says Minseok, sweet and deadly all at once, impossible to argue against. 

There’s long pause where everyone continues to stare at him and he begins to resign himself to his fate. He probably wouldn’t accept it from anyone but Chanyeol, who has no concept of boundaries even normally, and he definitely wouldn’t accept it if he wasn’t more than a little bit drunk. His cheeks are warm and his hands are tingling and he decides it doesn’t matter. It’s a game. He sighs and Chanyeol understands instantly that he’s won and beams at him. He scrambles across the distance between them, all arms and legs and hair, and Kyungsoo bears the kiss that’s pressed to his cheek. Sloppy and warm and thankfully lacking in teeth. It’s over in a moment and Jongin jostles at him with his shoulder and he can’t help but laugh. The whole situation is laughable, really, eight boys in a hotel room with nothing to do but play at kissing. 

“Your turn,” says Yixing, quiet and intense, staring at the bottle like he could move it with his mind if he wanted. Kyungsoo sighs again and when he puts his palm to the glass everyone cheers, louder than anything, and he feels so full up with love and with belonging that he has to shut his eyes to spin it. 

It stops on Baekhyun of course, because the universe thinks it’s funny to throw them together like this. Because whatever invisible force that turns the bottle, God or the Earth’s orbit or Zhang Yixing, wants to make Kyungsoo suffer. He sighs once more and squints across at Baekhyun, who is soft and warm at his edges, made harmless by golden hotel lights. It would be easier if he were at his most dangerous, the person Baekhyun sometimes is on stage, black-lined eyes and a curled lip. Kyungsoo could pretend with him. 

“Come here,” says Baekhyun, head cocked to one side, eyes deceptively sleepy. Kyungsoo crawls on hands and knees across the carpet. He intends to kiss him on the cheek, something swift and dry, but he’s unsteady from the wine and Baekhyun keeps licking his lips and then he turns his head at the last second. 

They’ve kissed before, in situations similar to this, jokes that Baekhyun’s made or games that they’ve played, but something about this night makes it different. It’s the city lights and the taste of wine and the raindrops on the windows. It lasts no more than a few seconds, Kyungsoo’s dry lips, Baekhyun’s soft skin. Soft and warm and sweet and familiar even though it shouldn’t be. Kyungsoo loses himself, just for an instant, maybe presses closer than he ought to, maybe parts his lips, maybe touches Baekhyun’s collar, but then everything gets sharp and he falls backwards trying to pull away. Something has short-circuited in his head. He can see a miniature Seoul in every rain drop on the window. Baekhyun is staring at him, a hand at his lips, his soft lips, his... Chanyeol pushes Baekhyun over, laughing far too loudly, and it breaks whatever spell has held them all silent. 

Kyungsoo retreats back to his place in the circle while the others make flirty noises around him, joking like they ought to have done from the beginning. Jongin elbows Kyungsoo in the side when he’s settled, his expression questioning, and Kyungsoo grins around the electricity in his head. If Baekhyun’s spin lands on him he’s going to implode. 

“More wine?” Jongin asks, leaning close. 

“Definitely not." 

He looks everywhere but at Baekhyun, spinning the bottle. The black rectangle of the television, cut from space, the small, woolen loops of the cream carpet. His bitten fingernails against the plush. When he looks up Baekhyun is kissing the backs of Minseok’s hands and then the air above his shoes and everyone is laughing again. Minseok kisses Yixing’s dimple, making him laugh, quietly delighted, and then Yixing kisses Sehun three times on each cheek and once on the nose. Sehun kisses Jongdae on the mouth with such a frightening expression that Chanyeol laughs until he cries and the game never really recovers. 

They fall back into talking about nothing and mumbling their way through songs and drinking whatever they have left, the last mouthfuls of a thousand bottles. Kyungsoo plots his escape while dragging a finger around the rim of an empty soju bottle. Jongin flicks the same bottle with a fingernail but the hollow sound of it makes Kyungsoo a little queasy so he tips it over. He is feeling terribly sober suddenly, and terribly sick and terribly confused. Jongin won’t stop fiddling with his hair. Across the room Baekhyun is laughing and Kyungsoo refuses to look at him at all. It will be him and Jongdae and Chanyeol, tangled up in one another like they always are, casual and close and effortless. Kyungsoo used to envy them, back before their debut, but he’s found his own ways to be close to the group. He picks the bottle back up, dips his finger down the bottleneck to gather up the last drops of soju, tips it over again and sucks on his finger. 

“You should sleep,” says Jongin, always steady, always there. 

“Maybe,” he shrugs. “I’m not tired.” 

He stretches his legs out in front of him, lies back on the floor with his head cushioned in his hands. Jongin laughs. Chanyeol appears a little later and dangles his sleeve over his face until Kyungsoo swipes out at him and he ducks away, grinning like he doesn’t know another way to use his face. The night time gets a little quieter. Yixing strums a guitar and Jongdae mumbles nonsense words to a nonsense song and Kyungsoo hums along with him for awhile. Lying down doesn’t make him want to sleep, it just makes him feel like he’ll never move again, so he sits up and then stands up and then leaves. 

He’s sharing a room with Sehun, who stays back with the others, so it’s empty and cold. He gets a coat, his shoes, his phone, his wallet. He isn’t often recognised outside, even in Seoul, and it’s dark, so the coat should be enough. Baekhyun is recognised everywhere always, he thinks, and then he pushes that away and ties his shoes. He’ll start to feel normal outside, where the air isn’t thick with alcohol and other people laughing. 

He doesn’t have a destination in mind, he walks where the rain is brightest or through whatever building lobbies are still open. He feels like he’s been in the lobby of every hotel in Seoul. He knows elevators like he knows the choreography to their songs, the mirrored walls and ceilings, the not-quite-click when you push the button for your floor and it lights up. He knows which buildings have public rooftops too and he finds the closest and rides the elevator to the top, hoping gravity might restore his heart to the place it ought to be. 

This building has a rooftop garden and it’s thankfully deserted. The rain and the cold have kept everyone but him inside. He tucks his scarf tighter under his collar and goes to look over the balcony. It’s always beautiful, Seoul lit up. Beautiful like nothing else he knows, somehow both familiar and alien. He’s been to the top of a building like this before with Baekhyun. It was the middle of the afternoon and they stood at the balcony and Baekhyun screamed Kyungsoo’s name so loudly a flock of birds swarmed into the air, shrieking along with him. Kyungsoo’s voice had cracked when he’d tried to reciprocate, breaking along the syllables of Baekhyun’s name, and his stomach had hurt from laughing so hard. 

“You’re mine now,” Baekhyun had said, linking their arms together. “The whole city heard it.” 

“Maybe,” he’d replied, as aloof as he could get, and he’d pinched Baekhyun’s side until he let him go. 

Later, Baekhyun had taken his hand and they'd run down the stairs together instead of taking the lift, twenty flights of breathlessness, and when they opened the door outside the sun had been blinding. It was a good day, a strange day, and it makes his cheeks warm just to think about it. He frowns out at the city lights, drags his hands through the droplets of water hanging from the balcony railing. 

“Byun Baekhyun,” he says gravely, and then he laughs and wipes his hands on his sweater and then presses his palms to his cheeks until he stops feeling so giddy. 

A lot of people think it’s easy to make him angry, but that isn’t true. He can count on two hands the number of times he’s been genuinely angry at anyone in the group. Frustrated, yes, and annoyed and irritated and disappointed, but almost never angry. He’s a little bit angry at Baekhyun now though, and at himself, and at whatever one of them thought of playing spin the bottle in the first place. He’s a little bit angry at the night air, for not making him feel much better. 

Jongin calls him when he’s been there for a little over half an hour. He’s sitting on a bench, kicking at the pebbles that are scattered around the base of plants and trees. It’s crisp and cool there still and he feels like there could be a typhoon everywhere but there and he would never know it. But Jongin’s name flashes up on his phone and he sighs and brings himself back down to earth. 

“I’m fine,” he says, before Jongin can speak. 

“Sehun thinks you’ve been kidnapped.” 

“No, just walking.” 

“Are you coming back any time?” 

“Yes,” he smiles. “Soon.” 

There is the cloudy, muffled noise of a phone changing hands and Kyungsoo thinks he should probably hang up before whoever has stolen Jongin’s phone gets a chance to speak, but he doesn’t. 

“Kyungsoo,” says Baekhyun. 

“What?” It takes everything in him not to say his name. 

“Where are you?” 

"In a garden.” 

“No, _where_? I’ll come get you.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.” 

“ _No_ ,” insists Baekhyun and Kyungsoo can almost see what his expression must be like, nervous and desperate and more than a little bit petulant. Perhaps he’s chewing on his lower lip. Perhaps there is a wrinkle between his eyebrows. “It’s going to rain, I’ll bring an umbrella.” 

“I’ll come see you when I get back.” 

“Just tell me where you are." 

“Please give Jongin his phone back.” 

Baekhyun sighs like it’s the end of the world but he does as he’s asked and the phone changes hands again. 

“Don’t let him leave,” Kyungsoo tells Jongin. 

“I know.” 

“Is Sehun okay?” 

“He’s fine, just drunk.” 

“I’ll be back in half an hour.” 

He takes his time walking back. The garden isn’t that far from the hotel anyway and the lights are still nice and the smell of the rain is still nice and he thinks that if he goes slowly it will prove he doesn’t care. Truthfully, he cares about everything. He cares about Chanyeol playing with his sleeves and Yixing’s expression when he plays guitar and about Jongdae smiling. Sehun had worried about him. Baekhyun had stolen Jongin’s phone. All of this itches at his palms so bad he puts them in his pockets and concentrates on his steps lining up against the cracks in the pavement. They have no right to worry, he tells himself, he’s his own and no one else’s. 

It doesn’t rain. He stands outside the hotel for longer than he should, staring at the doors, the golden light of the lobby, the crimson couches where guests sit while they wait for their rooms to be ready. He swipes his room key at the after hours door and heads inside. In the lift he presses the button to his floor a thousand times, like that might make it faster or break it entirely and keep him on the ground. He is almost completely sober and his heart is in his throat. He goes to his room first and lets Sehun pretend to be outraged while he takes off his shoes. 

“Go to sleep,” he says. 

“Don’t be loud,” says Sehun, pulling blankets over his head. 

He texts Jongin as he walks to Baekhyun and Yixing’s room. He presses his fingertips to his lower lip, like he might taste his pulse there. He knocks on the door and he thinks he can hear his blood moving through his veins, his heart beating faster, his skin trembling. He tells himself he’s being stupid and then Baekhyun opens the door, wide eyes and messy hair, and he knows he’s not being stupid at all. 

“Do you have your room key?” he asks, before Baekhyun can even open his mouth. Baekhyun nods, looking a little dazed, and Kyungsoo reaches out and takes him by the wrist, pulls him into the hallway. He lets go immediately and they walk down the hall together, quiet steps on cream carpet. Kyungsoo isn’t sure where they’re going, just away from rooms where people are sleeping, just away from places so quiet he can’t think. 

“Where are we going?” Baekhyun finally asks him, when they reach a dead end, and Kyungsoo frowns and clasps his hands together so he can’t chew his fingernails. 

“I don’t... know,” he says slowly. “Is there anywhere without security cameras?" 

“Are you going to murder me?” 

“No, I’m going to..” he frowns again, clears his throat. “Nothing, I don’t know.” 

“I’m sorry,” says Baekhyun. 

“For what?” 

“For before.” 

“We need to be somewhere else,” mutters Kyungsoo. “We need to be somewhere else for this conversation.” 

They end up back at Kyungsoo’s room. Baekhyun wakes Sehun up, nudging at his shoulders, and he swears under his breath the whole time it’s explained to him that he needs to go and sleep in Yixing’s room, but he does as he’s asked. Kyungsoo decides he’ll get him a present, something for Vivi maybe, something to apologise for upending his whole night. He doesn’t think about the fact that Baekhyun will be sleeping in the same room as him now. He doesn’t think about the amount of space between the two beds or about how they’re far too massive for just one person really. He opens the curtains a little, Seoul wreathed in lights, and he presses his forehead against the glass until he can think straight again. 

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says, coming up beside him, pushing the curtains open further so they’re two people standing against glass. 

“For what?” Kyungsoo sighs. 

“For kissing you.” 

“I kissed you,” he points out. “I spun the bottle.” 

“Yeah, but I turned my head.” 

“Why?” 

Baekhyun falls silent, he tiptoes his fingers up the glass instead, pressing clear spaces into the condensation. Kyungsoo watches his hands so he isn’t watching his face, the ovals of his fingernails, not bitten short like his but clean and smooth and sharp at the corners. There is a headache starting behind his eyes somewhere, a remnant of the wine maybe, or just the stress of standing with a boy you like after he has kissed you. 

“Because I wanted to,” says Baekhyun suddenly, his words firm and final. 

“ _Why_?” Kyungsoo repeats, unable to understand it. 

“Do you remember when we found that garden?” Baekhyun asks, instead of answering. “On the roof of the place we did that photo shoot?” 

“Yes,” whispers Kyungsoo, his breath fogging up the window. He’d assumed that Baekhyun had forgotten. 

“Your makeup had got messed up and you looked so... _soft_. It made me want to yell your name so everyone could hear what I was feeling.” 

“What were you feeling?” Kyungsoo’s heart is in his mouth. 

“I wanted to kiss you,” says Baekhyun, and he laughs. “I still want to kiss you.” 

Almost a month ago, Kyungsoo had been sick. It was just the flu, a fever and a scowl, but Baekhyun had treated him like he was dying. He brought him food and pressed a cool palm to his forehead. He tried to feed him soup with a spoon and laughed when Kyungsoo knocked the spoon away. It was not more than what any of them would do for each other, but Kyungsoo thinks of it now. _I still want to kiss you_. He almost asks why again. 

“Okay,” he says, instead. 

“Okay what?” Baekhyun sounds terribly wary, like someone’s playing a trick on him, waiting in the closet to jump out and scream. Kyungsoo looks away to hide his smile. 

“Okay you can kiss me,” he says, when he turns back. Baekhyun’s eyes are still narrowed and one of his hands is held at the hollow of his throat. He’s wearing sweatpants and a fluffy white hotel robe. He’s wearing socks with foxes at the toes. 

“Oh,” he says. His fingers flutter at his throat. 

“Anytime now,” says Kyungsoo, not hiding his smile now, not hiding anything. Baekhyun’s expression turns determined and Kyungsoo’s stomach lurches and Baekhyun steps closer. They kiss, two people against glass, Baekhyun’s hands at Kyungsoo’s jaw, his shoulder, in his hair. Baekhyun’s hands are soft and his skin is soft and his lips are... Kyungsoo pushes against him like he will fall if they’re not touching. Baekhyun’s tongue is soft and his breath is soft and his teeth are sharp. Kyungsoo kisses the corners of his mouth, his cheek, his earlobe, pushes him until he’s against the wall, bracketed by Kyungsoo’s arms. He laughs and wriggles under Kyungsoo’s hands and then kisses his throat and his temples and the bow of his lips. 

“Was it your idea to play spin the bottle?” Kyungsoo asks him later, when they’re sitting on his bed, hands and feet entwined. Baekhyun laughs. 

“No,” he says. “Chanyeol wanted to play matchmaker.” 

“With _us_?” 

“With anyone,” he smiles. “But he’s going to take credit for us.” 

Kyungsoo doesn’t reply, too caught on how real it has all suddenly become. This will be a thing that people _know_. This will last longer than the night does. He turns Baekhyun’s hand over in his, kisses his knuckles. Baekhyun makes a noise somewhere in between a hum and a sigh and rests his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulder. He feels like he’s still standing at the top of a building, surrounded by bright lights, and he _knows_ this place; he knows the slope of Baekhyun’s neck and the way his top lip curves upwards and the places where they fit together just like they were made to. He knows the ways his voice climbs when he sings. He knows it and he’s always known it and it’s like he’s looking out across the city and the rain has just stopped and his heart has found a way to beat comfortably under his ribs, with Baekhyun next to him, hand in his, soft and soft and soft. 

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i wrote this and then i got all worked up about like.. why they were in a hotel in seoul anyway. i decided junmyeon took them on a little holiday for some reason. because he's a good parent. so that's that. this is also my first ever uuuh.. attempt at rpf. i'm a little terrified but that's alright. i liked writing it. i like these kids a lot. i might write more. i hope so! im sorry jongin didn't get kissed, he should be kissed. im @tabeorin on tumblr if you wanna say hello. thank you for reading !


End file.
